The black flag raised by the Islamic State (ISIS) has once again accompanied a brutal attack in the United States. Texan citizen Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, killed at least 15 people with his vehicle and firearm during the celebrations of the first day of the year in New Orleans. Hours later, President Joe Biden stated that the attack was “inspired by ISIS.” The banner of the jihadist group found on the van with which Jabbar rammed into the crowd, an emblem that many others have used before to frame their acts of violence, is not the only indication that links him to the terrorist organization rooted in Syria and Iraq. According to the content of videos found on social networks, which investigation sources have told the local press, Jabbar had expressed his loyalty to ISIS, almost as an escape route from the desire to reunite his family – he had three children and two ex-wives—to kill her.
This accession, the process of radicalization of the individual and the method chosen to attack are good proof of the strength that ISIS maintains as a trigger and fuel to sow terror in the West more than five years after the end of the caliphate.
The shadow of this organization in acts of terrorism in the United States is not new. Neither does he modus operandi followed by Jabbar. On October 31, 2017, Uzbek Saifullo Saipov, then 29 years old, caused the death of eight people by driving a van along a bike path next to the Hudson River in New York. Again, the authorities found the ISIS flag in the vehicle. The investigation found no operational link with the armed group. The seized material showed an autonomous radicalization process through the videos of the organization’s first leader, Abubaker al Bagdadi. It was also, as the first investigations in New Orleans seem to indicate, an attack inspired by the most powerful brand of global jihad today.
According to the analysis carried out by the North American analysis center The Soufan Center, directed by terrorism expert Colin P. Clarke, the attack in the city of the State of Louisiana was celebrated in several chats of ISIS supporters, where Jabbar was praised by the method he used—after running over dozens of people, he opened fire on the police almost suicidally until he was killed, a common culmination among ISIS terrorists.
His profile fits that formed during this decade by many of the terrorists moved in the West by the ISIS flag, despite the fact that the majority committed attacks at a younger age. He was an unstable individual, with a slight record of minor crimes, affected by financial and family problems, who converted to Islam, drifted into radicalism and finally began to commit violence.
Express recruits
It is on this border that goes from extremism to pulling the trigger in which, following the portrait of the jihadist organization’s express recruits, the ISIS brand has served as fuel and detonator: first because the organization offers justification through its propaganda for the commission of the attack, part of his campaign of indiscriminate terror towards anyone he considers unfaithful. Secondly, because of the multiplier effect on public opinion that a multiple murder has if it is done in the name of the most ruthless and popular group of the moment. Although the caliphate, the main support of ISIS, both for its recruiting strength and its revenue-raising power, was dismantled more than five years ago, the group is still alive with around 2,500 combatants between Syria and Iraq and regional branches with notable growth, like the Afghan one, behind the death of more than 130 people in Moscow last March, or the Somali one.
Jihadist terrorism continues to be one of the main threats to Washington. In evaluations made public in recent years, the FBI has reiterated that it maintains around 1,000 investigations related to ISIS. In a letter signed in July, the director of the organization, Christopher Wray, stated: “ISIS and its supporters continue to aggressively promote their hate-based rhetoric, and attract violent extremists (…) willing to carry out attacks against the United States. “Uh.” Terrorism expert Seamus Hughes, from the National Center for Anti-Terrorism Innovation, Technology and Education, recalled this Wednesday that since 2014, more than 250 people have been accused in the United States of activities related to ISIS.
There are few attacks that have shaken the West organized directly from Mesopotamia. Among those that did rely on the group’s planning are the attacks in Paris (November 2015) and Brussels (March 2016). Most acts under the signature of ISIS have been perpetrated by individuals inspired by its propaganda, either alone or through a cell of co-religionists. This enormous attraction has been one of the keys to the terror success of this organization.
With the borders of Syria sealed, faced with the impossibility of continuing to expand the ranks of the caliphate, ISIS has been able to spread through its propaganda organs a message that is still valid: its followers did not need to travel anywhere; They could stay in their places of residence and kill with whatever they had at hand.
From there, the imitation effect. The brutal truck attack in Nice in July 2016, with 86 dead, was followed, among others, by the attacks in Berlin, that same year, and London, Barcelona, Stockholm and New York, a year later. All of them were committed with a vehicle as a weapon and under the influence of ISIS terror. An analysis published last November by the British newspaper Guardian warned of the increase in messages on the platform on-lineRocket.Chat, one of the most used by followers of armed jihadism, about attacks on holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas. The impact of an act of this brutality has greater impact when its expected audience is in a moment of celebration. This has happened now in New Orleans, as it happened nine years ago in Berlin, or in New York during Halloween 2017.
